Section 3201(b)(1)
of the New York Insurance Law requires the filing for approval of all Policy Forms
that are delivered or issued for delivery in New York for the types of insurance
defined in the following Paragraphs of Section 1113(a)
of the New York Insurance Law:

The Life Bureau is responsible for the review of all life
insurance, annuity and credit unemployment insurance Policy Forms. We also
are responsible for credit accident and health (disability) insurance Policy Forms.

b.
Premium Rates

There are just a few products subject to the
Life Bureau’s review that require rate review. These are:

Group life insurance where the groups are subject to Regulation 123; Credit
Life Insurance; Credit accident and health insurance; Credit Unemployment
Insurance; and An involuntary unemployment lapse protection benefit Life
Insurance

c. Out of State Filings

Section 3201(b)(2) indicates:

‘No unallocated group annuity
contract or funding agreement, or policy form for accident and health insurance
or any other policy form specified by the superintendent pursuant to regulation
shall be issued by a domestic insurer or fraternal benefit society for delivery
outside this state unless it has been filed with the superintendent.’

Domestic
Life Insurers may use SERFF to make these submissions. The Filing Type should
be “Form”, the Filing Mode should be “Other” with an explanation
of “Out of State Filing”.

d.
Other Submissions

In addition to Form and Rate submissions,
the Life Bureau also accepts the following submissions through SERFF:

The “Review & Approval"
filing mode should be selected. As the name suggests the forms are approved
only after they are reviewed and found acceptable.

b.
Alternative Approval Procedure (“Deemer”)

The “File & Use” filing mode should be selected.

Section
3201(b)(6) and Circular Letter No. 2 (1998) provide for an expedited approval
procedure designed to prevent delays by deeming forms to be approved or denied
if the Department or insurer fail to act in a timely manner.

After
receipt of a submission the Department has 90 days to act on the submission or
it is “Deemed” approved. If objections are raised during the
90 day period then the Insurer has 45 days to respond. If the Department
receives a response within the 45 days it then has 45 days to take action.
If no action is taken then the submission is “Deemed” approved at
the end of this 45 day period.

c.
Prior Approval with Certification Procedure

The "Other" filing
mode should be selected with an Explanation of "Certified".

Circular Letter
No. 6 (2004) provides for an expedited approval procedure based on an appropriate
certification of compliance signed by an officer of the company in the format
provided by Circular Letter No. 6 (2004). Certifications that deviate from the
language proscribed by the circular letter will not be accepted.

The Life Bureau no longer requires that
a separate signed cover letter be included with the submission. Any information
that would ordinarily be included in the signed Cover Letter must be placed in
the filing description instead. Inclusion of "Please see cover letter" or phrases
of similar intent in the filing description section will not be considered as
meeting our filing requirements.

A number of circular letters and product
outlines require information to be included in the submission letter. Except to
the extent this information is already included in SERFF in other places this
information must be included in the SERFF filing Description. The main areas that
do NOT need to be included in the SERFF filing description are:

The "Re" requirements of Circular Letter 8 of 1999 because this information is
split between the SERFF TOI, the SERFF Sub-TOI and the SERFF Form Schedule.

The requirement in Circular Letter 2 of 1998 to include "SECTION 3201(b)(6) DEEMER
FILING" in the "Re" of Deemer filings, because Deemer filings are identified in
the SERFF Requested Filing Mode as "File & Use".

Circular Letter 8
of 1999 requires each policy form in a submission to be identified by a "generic
product description" and a "generic form description". The generic product description
requirement is satisfied by choosing the Type of Insurance (TOI) from the Uniform
Product Coding matrix. The use of the Form Schedule for the generic form description
is a problem. The generic form description by function matches the Form Type.
However, the limited choices for this field in SERFF do not meet the requirements
of Circular Letter 8 of 1999. For SERFF submissions the Form Schedule will replace
the RE requirement of Circular Letter 8 of 1999.

Important
- The generic form description required by Circular Letter 8 of 1999 should be
put in the Form Name field. Form Number may not include semi-colons (;).

b. With the exceptions described
below for Variable Material and Lists of Funds, there should be only one attachment
per line. Versions of policy forms that show changes from earlier versions should
be included in the supporting documentation.

c.
The Form Number should be exactly what appears in the lower left corner of the
Form. In particular if the word "Form" does not appear in the lower left corner
then it should not be part of the Form Number on the Form Schedule.

d. The memorandum of variable
material should be included in the Form Schedule. The Form Number should be the
Form Number of the form that the memorandum of variable material is to be used
with. The generic form description "Variable Material" should be put in the Form
Name field.

Almost all companies submit the available variable funds for
variable products as variable material. The Life Bureau now requires that the
memorandum of variable material that lists the available variable funds be submitted
separately from the memorandum of variable material for all other variations of
the forms. Similar rules apply except that the generic form description of "List
of Funds" should be put in the Form Name field of the Form Schedule.

There
are a number of acceptable ways for inclusion of the Variable Material and Lists
of Funds in the Form Schedule. A company may use any one of these for a particular
submission.

Approach 1 is the most straightforward. Each item (i.e. Policy
Form, Variable Material, List of Funds) appear on a separate line in the Form
Schedule with one attachment per line. The Form Type in SERFF for Variable Material
and List of Funds should be "OTH". For variable material either "Variable Material"
or "MOV" should be put in the Form Name field. For the list of funds either "List
of Funds" or "LOF" should be put in the Form Name field.

It is possible
to have one memorandum of variable material cover a number of forms. If this is
done, the memorandum must appear on a separate line in the Form Schedule for each
form covered by the memorandum. The same attachment would be used each time the
memorandum appears in the schedule.

Approach 2 recognizes that one Memorandum
of Variable Material (or List of Funds) may cover a number of Forms. In this case
one line in the Forms Schedule may be used for the variable material. Each Form
Number that the Variable Material applies to should be put in the Form Number
field with each form separated by semi-colons. The Form Type is "OTH". For variable
material either "Variable Material" or "MOV" should be put in the Form Name field.
For the list of funds either "List of Funds" or "LOF" should be put in the Form
Name field. And there should only be one attachment per line.

Important
- The Form Number field in SERFF is limited to 255 characters. This limitation
may occasionally require the use of multiple lines.

Approach 3 is designed
to have all three possible attachments for a given Policy Form on the same line
of the Form Schedule. The Form Number would go into the Form Number Field. The
Form Type should be based on the type of the Policy Form. The form name should
include the generic form description from Circular Letter 8 of 1999, if applicable
"Variable Material" or "MOV" and if applicable "List of Funds" or "LOF". Then
on the one line would be attachments for the Policy Form, Variable Material (if
applicable) and the List of Funds (if applicable).

Please note that this
approach does have the drawback that if only one part of the line needs to be
revised, then the entire line of the Form Schedule will need to be resubmitted.

Sometimes a company submits several versions
of a form. One version may show the form with bracketing to indicate the variable
items, another may be a "clean" copy without the bracketing, while a third version
may show how this forms was changed from a previous version.

Only the version
with the bracketing should appear in the form schedule. Both the "clean" version
without the bracketing and the mock-up version should be included in the supporting
documents section.

In general responses to Life
Bureau objection letters are due within 15 calendar days, unless otherwise indicated
in the objection letter.

In general all outstanding issues are expected
to be resolved with 2 objection letters. Additional objections letter may occur
for easily resolved outstanding issues. Any additional objections letter will
have a greatly reduced timeframe to respond.